Northwestern University Athletics
The Skip Report: Purdue Primer
1/20/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 20, 2014
NUsports.com Special Contributor Skip Myslenski takes a look at the philosophical change that has led to the Wildcats' recent success.
From the start Chris Collins has made his expectations clear. "I want us to play as hard if not harder than anybody we play," he said in a representative statement after his team's opening-game win over Eastern Illinois. But it was just eight days ago, on that Sunday evening that they defeated Illinois, that his `Cats fully presented themselves as a frenzied, frenetic, boundless threshing machine.
They limited the Illini to 19.4 percent shooting in that affair's first half, to 28.1 percent shooting on the night, and then they encored that effort by holding Michigan State to 54 points (25.6 below its season average) and Indiana to 47 (31.1 below its). They toppled the Hoosiers as well, toppled them at their raucous Assembly Hall home, and so now they await Purdue's Tuesday visit to Welsh-Ryan firmly stamped as lunch-pail-toting, blue-collar laborers.
"I don't think so," Drew Crawford will say when asked if there was a eureka moment that transformed them into The Denial Bunch. "It's something we've been talking about since Day One. We've always embraced it, but now we're finally getting onto the court and actually doing it, making it live on the court. That's been the way we wanted to be all year. It's just taken us a little while to find our niche as a team, to find the way we're going to win."
"I think after that Iowa game, that was a real downer for us," Collins himself will say to the same question. "Wisconsin (a 27-point loss), we got punched right in the mouth by them. Michigan (a 23-point loss), we did some good stuff, we were right there and just kind of folded late. Then Iowa, we just got killed. They were running up and down the floor, they were dunking the ball, and I think all of us--myself included--we'd been preaching it, but we said, `Look, we can't do this. We've got to change. We've got to grind `em out. We've got to try to slow some of these teams down.'
"That's why that Illinois game was so big. Not only did we say it. We acted upon it and the guys got success from it and then, once you start having success, you begin to embrace. That, for me, is what I'm so proud of. None of these guys have ever really judged themselves based on their ability to do dirty work. It's always been, `Am I making shots?' or `Am I doing this offensively?' Now our guys are loving getting loose balls, taking charges. They're taking pride in those things and that makes me really proud."
"It was great to get some positive feedback (in the Illinois game) and get a win," Kale Abrahamson will finally echo. "We really needed that one. We were desperate then, and since then we've adopted that (blue collar attitude)."
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There is no exaggerating the degree-of-difficulty in this attitude adopted by the `Cats. There is no glamor in, no litany of stats to fill the box score, no promise of an ego-feeding appearance on that evening's top plays. It instead involves work, hard work; and sweat, gobs of sweat; and selflessness, utter selflessness; and communication and attention to detail and a willingness to sacrifice the body for the good of the whole. It can drain the mind, as well as the body, and that is especially true here with the `Cats essentially using just a six-man rotation.
Crawford has played 116 out of a possible 120 minutes in their last three games and both JerShon Cobb and Alex Olah, 110. Tre Demps has logged 96 and Sanjay Lumpkin, 92, and so it is no surprise that all of them received this text late Saturday night when they returned home from Indiana. It was from their trainer Alex Wong and it read, "I'm going to open the doors to the training room at 11:30 (Sunday morning)."
This is another subject Collins has talked about from season's start, working with his team's sports performance staff, and their partnership is crucial now in the belly of a schedule his limited rotation is attacking full bore. "It's huge. Huge. This time of the year, that becomes so big," he says. "How do you manage guys in between games? You can't over-practice them, but you've still got to get enough work in where you're staying sharp."
"It becomes a balance," says Mike Schweigert, the basketball team's sports performance director. "You have to do enough that the guys are staying in shape, being able to play hard. Yet you're factoring in enough time for recovery, injury management, all that. There's not necessarily a specific plan. It's case by case with each guy."
This is why, each day, Collins meets with or gets reports from both Wong and Schweigert, and why he then tailors that day's activities to the information in those reports. ("It's like another part of our staff," he says of that pair.) That is also why, on that Sunday morning after their upset of the Hoosiers, any number of `Cats joined Wong in the training room, where they iced down or got massages or slipped into a pair of recovery boots. "We need to take care of our bodies," explains Crawford. "It's not just what we're doing in practice and in games."
But that extraordinary effort they've given in their last three games, can they keep it up through season's end?
"I think so. And a lot of that comes down to the coaching staff, myself and the players knowing who they are," says Schweigert. "We're not going to come in the day after a game and go three hours. It's management. And so much of a situation like this is mind set. If you're going to go in for the next month-and-a-half and say, `Man, we only have 10 guys, we might wear down,' well, yeah, you're probably going to. But I'm pretty sure our guys know that the preparation and work they've put in has prepared them for this, and I think we're going to finish the season strong."
"We have to be able to sustain it," Crawford finally--and forcefully--says. "It's hard work. But it's something we're willing to put in."
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